Fascinated by what drives start ups to succeed, I look at the entire process from inception to fundraising and everything in between. I was previously an editor at Global Security Finance, a London-based newsletter covering security and defense for the finance community which meant uncovering start ups with exciting technologies as well as interviewing VCs, government officials and defense giants on their financing, funding and M&A strategy. As a Columbia Journalism School student I delved into an eclectic mix of city politics, struggling Harlem businesses and the interactive theatre scene. Although I’m British, a childhood spent in Malaysia has meant a lifelong addiction to Asian food. I continue to hunt down the perfect bowl of noodles in NYC, Sriracha sauce bottle in hand.

How To Start A Winery In Napa If You Can't Afford $100K An Acre

How do you start a decent winery in California these days? Unless your family’s been making wine in Napa or Sonoma County for decades or you’re looking into winemaking as an expensive hobby, stumping up $100,000 an acre for prime land is an impossible dream.

That’s the position three friends, Noah Dorrance, Baron Ziegler and Steve Graf, cofounders of Banshee Wine found themselves in.

“A lot of people in the wine business have made their money elsewhere,” says Dorrance. If they do happen to be local families, they’ve accumulated a lot of advantages, like the low cost of land beforehand.

Transplants from the East Coast and Midwest, the three all worked in the wine industry with the hope they’d ultimately own their own winery. So far they’d been priced out, until in 2009 Dorrance spotted a potential way in.

Banshee Cofounders, Baron Ziegler, Steve Graf and Noah Dorrance

He noticed hundreds of barrels gathering dust at the winery he worked at, destined eventually for $50-60 bottles of pinot. Dorrance had been making a barrel or two of his wine there every year as a sideline – something to drink on long evenings cooking in the backyard with friends who also worked in Sonoma’s vibrant wine and food industry.

Cash-crunched because of the recession the winery was having trouble getting the raw product into bottles. In a “confluence of skill and timing,” Dorrance negotiated a good deal and he and his business partners snapped up 20 barrels. They sold out within two months.

He called it Banshee after his dog which went bananas one afternoon and started running round and round in figure eights. Meanwhile, Banshee’s cofounders, both large importers of European wines, used their network of wine buyers and distributors to get Banshee out there.

The winery still doesn’t own land, but has lease agreements with vineyards. “We think it gets us the thing that we really want, which is the ability to farm the land,” says Dorrance.

Banshee is focused on growing Pinot and Chardonnay grapes on the extreme Sonoma coast, which sell for $25-40 bottle.

“There’s a band of coast that we really like because it’s influenced a lot by the fog,” says Dorrance. The huge coastline temperature swings means the sugar levels in the grapes don’t rise too quickly, essential for pinot, a complicated grape to grow.

The next problem Banshee had was competing in a similar price range for shelf space with the big California wines. “It’s about staying relevant and staying on their radar,” says Dorrance. “You can be a bigger company and spend a lot of money or you can be a smaller company and spend a lot of time.”

Last year cofounder Ziegler spent 150 days on the road. Since the initial 500 cases they created in 2009, the winery produced about 45,000 cases in 2013 between their Rickshaw and Banshee brands and now have distribution deals in 35 states, Canada and Denmark.

Before 2013 Banshee didn’t even have a tasting room. It still doesn’t have an official winery – usually renting space for their barrels where they can.

“Our biggest problem is we run out of wine,” says Dorrance. “We continually underestimate how much we’re going to sell.”

In 2013 Banshee opened a tasting room, a bohemian living room with old vintage couches in Healdsburg, Sonoma County. “It’s not a stilted bar environment,” says Dorrance. “We want the experience to go beyond the physical space.” They’re going to be organizing a mini-festival with bands and wine tasting called Bansheefest in 2014.

Banshee’s success is typical of a new generation of wine drinkers and a new landscape of wine producers and makers, says Chelsea Prince, author of Rock and Vine, a book about young upstarts in the wine industry.

“I think that right now we’re seeing that innovation extends beyond Silicon Valley,” says Prince. “Many new winemakers have friends working at GoogleGoogle and that innovation extends all the way to Napa and Sonoma,” she says. They’re much more at ease with social media as well as using technology to shake up one of the world’s oldest industries. Aside from using GoPro cameras inside to check on progress inside the barrels, some are making use of consumers’ being more open to things like wine on tap.

An example is Free Flow Wines which reengineered wine kegs to hold 26 bottles. Now you can tap a keg of premium wine and it can be kept fresh for 90 days, which hands over massive cost savings to restaurants – who usually could find they only sell a couple of glasses from a bottle of premium wine.

“The 70s and 80s were all about the big brands,” says Prince. “I think we’re done proving ourselves now, and we can be much more open to new varietals and evolve the legacy of American wines.”

Wine now is much more laidback. “We’ve got through the teenage years, now we can have fun,” she says.

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Please note that Healdsburg, Banshee, Sonoma Coast, Sebastopol Hills (Hurst vineyards) and Russian River (all locations where they get their grapes) are ALL in Sonoma, not Napa. The only non-Sonoma source they have according to their website is Anderson Valley, again not Napa.

I’ve visited their tasting room on several occasions and they do indeed make great wines. Thank you for this highlight.

100 large is hard enough, even for a couple acres, but in Napa north of the Oakville Cross you need 40 acres to get a second building permit, i.e. live on the property AND have a winery. That’s $4 mil and you haven’t build anything yet.